I think this is the most accurate sentiment. I played from Vanilla until the very end of Cataclysm.

But it has nothing to do with long term. It has to do with burn out and moving on. These things happen and it has a higher chance of happening the longer you do something. We've had long term players here say that they are still as into the game as ever. Just as we've had ones like you that put focus on their lack of interest on them being a long term player.

Turn over happens. WoW has had 10 million subscribers for the past 8 years. That means a lot of people to lose interest and move on. It is nothing new and not a trend of recent times or anything but Turn Over that happens regardless. Even if WoW was the most perfect game ever created you would still have people that would quit.

Not that it matters but I've played since the start of TBC. I've played every month since then but I've also had periods where I didn't do much but dailies or cool downs for weeks. But I'm still having fun and still glad I'm paying for what I am.

"Man is his own star. His acts are his angels, good or ill, While his fatal shadows walk silently beside him."-Rhyme of the Primeval Paradine AFC 54
You know a community is bad when moderators lock a thread because "...this isnt the place to talk about it either seeing as it will get trolled..."

From my own personal experiences, it seems like many people I know who play WoW, or have played WoW just say the game is a hamster wheelhouse. In other words, they say that Blizzard keeps churning out content that is the "same as before." Also it seems like the people in the guild only raid because there is "nothing else to do to keep them busy."

Nothing else to do to keep them busy? Yet this expansion has arguably more to do than any other expansion start with the exception of TBC. People call it burn out.

Content is now less varied, and comes out slower than before, and they call major content patches (5.1) content. Not much content there if you ask me.

Also another piece of evidence: Have you seen the server status lately when looking at sever lists? Most of the full servers are now medium to high, all the high servers are now low or medium, and medium servers are now low to non existant pops at peak times.

Whats the deal? Is enthusiasm for the game in general just dwindling?

There is a great deal many reasons why population is declining in World of Warcraft. And the majority of it is because of Blizzard Entertainment themselves. Allow me to explain this in greater detail.

First, every MMO on the market puts emphasis on leveling and the journey to level cap. But Blizzard has decided they'd rather rush people to level cap. So since Wrath of the Lich King, they nerfed the leveling up experience drastically. It used to be about the journey, not the destination. Every MMO on the market knows this. They each just do it differently. Some force you to grind kills, others put the grind behind amazing storyline questing. Lord of the Rings Online, for as nerfed as it has gotten, still puts emphasis on the journey to whatever the level cap is. Star Wars: The Old Republic, even being free to play, puts emphasis on the journey with amazing storytelling and interactive mission dialogues. But World of Warcraft no longer does this. Instead it's a big race to 90.

In Wrath of the Lich King, it was ridiculously easy to level to 80. Outland slowed you down because the content was still group focused. But they removed group quests in vanilla content, and lowered the amount of XP you needed to get to the current content. Then in Cataclysm, they redid the old world, nerfed the XP needed that much more. Mists of Pandaria made things worse, because not only did I find myself leveling up super fast in dungeons (Like 2-3 levels per run till I hit outland), but Pandaria content itself went by extremely fast as well, along with the levels. 3 days. That's how long it took me to hit 90 on my druid. So when you can hit end game 3 days into the expansion and nothing but dailies from that time on, there is seriously something wrong with the system. It no longer is about the journey. It is get to end game and grind dailies.

That's where the second issue comes in. Wrath of the Lich King, had dailies yes. But there were still other engaging things to do. You still had to get gear to run heroics. And still needed to gear to raid. In cataclysm, it also had dailies, but you still had to get the gear to run heroics, and the heroics were extremely challenging, and in my opinion, boring as hell. And forget about raiding until DS came out with raid finder. But Pandaria. The moment you hit 90, you could only queue for heroics. And you could be raid finder ready after only a couple heroic runs. And the raid finder content is so easy, and you couple this with the endless grind of dailies, and you got a mixing pot full of reasons people are getting bored.

And then there is the dailies themselves. I think we all can agree, Mists of Pandaria has introduce more dailies than any expansion in the history of World of Warcraft. And this was not a good thing. Dailies became all you had for end game MoP. And people went on the forums and let blizzard know, they didn't appreciate being forced to do dailies because that was all there really was to do. So what did Blizzard do to address this? 5.1 they gated the main storyline behind an endless wall of dailies you must do to get more of the story. For many, this was the last straw. For me, it was 1 of the last straws.

We finally get the last part that forced me to leave. Cross Realm Zones. My guild would RP in the open world. We relied on our passenger mounts to get our lowbies to areas they couldn't reach on their own, for RP. CRZ not only ruined the fishing tournaments, it broke these mounts. It introduced lag and disconnects and hangups. And to top it all off, it introduced a wider range for griefers to grief. Instead of being limited to their own servers where their community has them on ignore and their names known, they now have tons of other servers to grief. Be it wiping out entire quest hubs, to sitting on key npc's with their giant mounts just to make clicking them difficult. And if they are on a pve server, they make sure they are flagged so if you try clicking the npc, you end up hitting them, and the neutral town guards 1 shot you.

What was Blizzard's response to the tons of complaints about CRZ? "If you are alone any time in the game, you aren't playing the game right" "We can't fix the mount issue, just deal with it" "We are being bullish about this issue, people will learn to like our system and the complaints will end". And when they started banning people speaking out against their company or the feature, and not doing a single thing to the pro-crz people who actively insult, flame, and troll the anti-crz people, just to put an end to the legitimate complaints people have with a system that should never of left beta, it became the last straw for this player.

So the majority of the reasons people are leaving are because of Blizzard. But it is also the toxic community that Blizzard is fostering that is also driving people away. And I am willing to bet, as more time passes, the subscription numbers will continue to plummet. Me, I have no intention of buying any more World of Warcraft expansions. Not until Blizzard changes their attitude towards the player base. They know they've fostered a toxic community, and they no longer speak to the player base through their own forums now. Instead it's all on twitter. I don't know any game developer company that has made the decision to abandon their own official forums, in favor of twitter except Blizzard.

My enthusiasm has definitely diminished. Basically I played WoW to pvp and MoP ruined pvp. So there you go.

As far as the community on the whole I don't think wow will ever reach 12 million subs again...however...I'm not going to say it's now in a state of rapid decline. I think the community is probably falling off...but very very gradually. WoW will still be the biggest MMO for years to come.

it depends. if you like Zynga style gameplay, but think you should be paying a monthly subscription for it, then sure. jump right in. if, on the other hand, you are a proper gamer, and you are looking for good challenging gameplay, dont touch it with the proverbial barge-pole.

everything outside proper raiding requires no skill or intelligence. proper raiding requires you to organise your life around the game to some degree. if that sounds attractive to you, then feel free to get involved. but imo, you are 3 or 4 years late to really enjoy it.

When challenging a Kzin, a simple scream of rage is sufficient. You scream and you leap.

Over the last 10 years, Blizzard has taken over $10bn from MMO players. Take a look around your game...do you see $10bn worth of content available to you? Do you see even a tiny fraction of that in relevant content? Now ask me again why I dislike what Blizzard has done to the MMO industry.

5.1 they gated the main storyline behind an endless wall of dailies you must do to get more of the story. For many, this was the last straw. For me, it was 1 of the last straws.

Five or so dailies a day is hardly an endless wall. If you can spend 10 to 15 min playing the game for a reward then why are you even playing the game in the first place? Dailies are great because they are optional. They allow you to do them at your pace. You don't have to do them all in one day (but you can if you want). Just because you can do more then 25 now doesn't mean you are forced to do it.

Every time I see someone listing theirs reasons for why dailies are bad for the game I just have to laugh. Because all of it boils down to I don't want to have to play the game to get my reward. I'd rather do a dungeon for 10 mins and get it all from that rather then having to spend the same time doing a few different dailies. Its not even a grind with alts anymore since you get faster rep gains once you hit revered on one character (you have to buy and use the account wide item first of course).

All there is to do? So you complain because you HAVE something to do. Without dailies what would you be doing? Nothing? sitting in trade? Dungeons? Heroics? LFR? Nothing is stopping you from doing every you would have done if Blizzard had little or no dailies in MoP. You are right about one thing, the community is toxic. But I don't think you actually see the toxic part for what it is because your responses and attitude is exactly that Toxic.

"Man is his own star. His acts are his angels, good or ill, While his fatal shadows walk silently beside him."-Rhyme of the Primeval Paradine AFC 54
You know a community is bad when moderators lock a thread because "...this isnt the place to talk about it either seeing as it will get trolled..."

The game itself has gotten stale, and with the changes, "features" and ideology Blizzard has adapted over the course of the game, has cultured a certain type of community that's unbearable to deal with on every level. It's more the fault of the level the community has devolved into than the actual game itself why I stopped playing. It is, however, Blizzard as a whole why I'll never buy another game/expansion from them again.

Certainly. Why wouldn't it? It is a great game with fun activities. It still provides challenging content (only 133 guilds have fulled cleared all heroic content). Do you have to do some work for items? Sure, it isn't just show up and get stuff. But what is so bad about playing a game so you can play the game?

"Man is his own star. His acts are his angels, good or ill, While his fatal shadows walk silently beside him."-Rhyme of the Primeval Paradine AFC 54
You know a community is bad when moderators lock a thread because "...this isnt the place to talk about it either seeing as it will get trolled..."

It amazes me how people still care about this game... I remember I came back for 4.3... did the new dungeons, almost fell asleep due to the pathetic difficulty and recycled zones. Didn't even bother trying LFR or dragon soul. They reused old models for the bosses, the whole raid was just made out of old terrain. It's completely ridiculous that blizzard have such low standards now. They never recycled anything in vanilla and TBC. They came out with tons of new content. Now it's just minimum effort for maximum profit.

What is wrong with re-using models, zones, and other art if it fits the storyline and lore? Why would Dragon Soul have been better if Dragonblight and wyrmrest temple was 100% new? Why would ZG and ZA have been better if it was all 100% brand new? They were a continuance of the story of those places much like the Cataclysm moved the story of Vanilla zones forward. Which reuse much of the same art (some zones had new art where appropriate though much of it was re-used in a new location).

What is ridiculous is that people want new just for the sake of new. You might as well complain because Valley of the four winds recycles the color green for grass. Nagrand and elwyn forest clearly used it first so recycled content is recycled. Oh the shame on blizzard trying to pass grass off as green in another expansion.

"Man is his own star. His acts are his angels, good or ill, While his fatal shadows walk silently beside him."-Rhyme of the Primeval Paradine AFC 54
You know a community is bad when moderators lock a thread because "...this isnt the place to talk about it either seeing as it will get trolled..."

It amazes me how people still care about this game... I remember I came back for 4.3... did the new dungeons, almost fell asleep due to the pathetic difficulty and recycled zones. Didn't even bother trying LFR or dragon soul. They reused old models for the bosses, the whole raid was just made out of old terrain. It's completely ridiculous that blizzard have such low standards now. They never recycled anything in vanilla and TBC. They came out with tons of new content. Now it's just minimum effort for maximum profit.

1. Only the first boss used the old terrain, every other boss was new terrain.
2. Classic is known as the "reuse models"-part of this game.

Complaining that Dragonsoul-raid was in Wyrmrest Temple/Dragonblight is just ridiculous.
It's an entire raid based around the 4 'good' Aspects and Deathwing fighting, the temple is like a holy place for them, Dragonblight is where all their Shrines are located and where the Dragons go when they are about to die.
Putting the raid somewhere else would be retarded, they had no choice! =/
But important lore stuff like that doesn't matter to you probably, just as long as you have something to whine about.

Five or so dailies a day is hardly an endless wall. If you can spend 10 to 15 min playing the game for a reward then why are you even playing the game in the first place? Dailies are great because they are optional. They allow you to do them at your pace. You don't have to do them all in one day (but you can if you want). Just because you can do more then 25 now doesn't mean you are forced to do it.

Every time I see someone listing theirs reasons for why dailies are bad for the game I just have to laugh. Because all of it boils down to I don't want to have to play the game to get my reward. I'd rather do a dungeon for 10 mins and get it all from that rather then having to spend the same time doing a few different dailies. Its not even a grind with alts anymore since you get faster rep gains once you hit revered on one character (you have to buy and use the account wide item first of course).

All there is to do? So you complain because you HAVE something to do. Without dailies what would you be doing? Nothing? sitting in trade? Dungeons? Heroics? LFR? Nothing is stopping you from doing every you would have done if Blizzard had little or no dailies in MoP. You are right about one thing, the community is toxic. But I don't think you actually see the toxic part for what it is because your responses and attitude is exactly that Toxic.

But again, the argument isn't about the dailies themselves. It's the fact that they decided to gate the patch's main storyline behind them dailies. Having done every storyline quest in Pandaria, I play these games for their story. And being forced to do the dailies to see 4 or 5 more quests in the primary story, was a terrible idea.

As for the toxic community, complaining about the behavior of the community, and about blizzard's bad behavior isn't toxic. What is toxic is griefers getting away with everything because CRZ lets them. What is toxic is legitimate feedback on the official forums ends up with the ones who don't like a feature being trolled, insulted and harassed by pro-blizzard fanboys, and of course Blizzard looking for reasons to get rid of the ones complaining about their beloved feature that people hate.

It is kind of like the time Blizzard was going to put real ID on their forums. People complained. Imagine then, if they took todays attitude they have with CRZ, and applied it to real id on their forums. People would of quit the game, like they are now. And the fanboys would be there to point and laugh and ask if they could have our stuff. And Blizzard sits by, and lets them. Complaining about something you dislike, in hopes of getting a change reverted, isn't toxic. Seeing the official forums devolve into crap threads that serve 0 purpose and Blizzard's own community managers encouraging it, is what is creating the toxic atmosphere.

But one thing you can't say is that I am one of the toxic players, since I don't even have a subscription to WoW no more. I stopped playing in the middle of december. Best decision I ever made. Having a blast in SWTOR.